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San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris hugs a friend at a publication party for her new book, "Smart on Crime," Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 in San Francisco. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris greets a crowd of well-wishers at a publication party for her new book, "Smart on Crime," Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 in San Francisco. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)

Just in time for her campaign to become California’s next attorney general, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has released a book of strategies to reduce crime and save money doing it.

“Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer” seeks to debunk preconceived ideas about crime and introduces programs deemed successful in San Francisco since Harris was elected to be the city’s top prosecutor in 2003.

“These are models that are easy to replicate around the country and adaptable to most any community,” Harris said last week at a launch party for her book at Chronicle Books’ South of Market offices. “These initiatives save us money so what they are designed to do is address what we all want in terms of increased public safety and do it in a way that also maximizes limited public resources.”

A better return

The 45-year-old East Bay native, who began her career as a prosecutor for Alameda County nearly 20 years ago, started penning her ideas for the publishing house several years ago. In it, Harris says the United States deserves a better return on the $200 billion it spends on combating crime every year. With two-thirds of prison inmates likely to reoffend within two years of release, Harris points to a broken system that fails in rehabilitation and early intervention.

Among the strategies Harris outlines is the Back on Track program she started in San Francisco in 2005. The program allows first-time, nonviolent drug offenders to plead guilty in exchange for a deferred sentence on the condition that, under court monitoring, they complete job training, community service, educational and life-skill classes. In its four years, Back on Track has reduced recidivism among first-time, nonviolent offenders from 54 to 10 percent, saving $1 million a year in jail costs alone, Harris said.

Other programs target children and teens at risk of becoming criminals. Harris calls for clinical treatment for children victims and witnesses to crimes who have signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Without treatment, Harris says these children are more likely to commit crimes and drop out of school.

As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris has been partnering with the San Francisco Unified School District to curb truancy among children and teens. Teens who are habitual truants are more likely to end up in jail, Harris said, and 94 percent of the San Francisco homicide victims younger than 24 were high school dropouts. Last month, Harris’ anti-truancy efforts were beefed up to include driver’s license suspension and court monitoring for truant high school students and criminal prosecution for their parents.

The cost of truancy

“The direct costs for a child being truant and thereby being involved in juvenile crime is $1.1 billion a year in California, and estimates have it going in the double-digit billions a year when you talk about the associated costs in terms of social services and public health systems and things of that nature,” Harris said. “So it’s really a matter of all of us agreeing that, one, by definition, there is no such thing as a quick fix to a long-standing problem, but, two, it doesn’t take very long to see the benefits.

“They may not be immediate, but they will occur in the not-so-distant future.”

Perhaps what makes Harris’ book different from others about fighting crime is its attempt to reach beyond the law enforcement community to cross sections of society. Learning institutions, businesses, nonprofits, community and faith-based organizations are called upon to partner with law enforcement. It’s clear that Harris believes that everyone should be joining the conversation and measuring what’s yielding results and what isn’t.

“It is well within our reach to create a future with safer streets, lower rates of recidivism, and a stronger, better-educated workforce,” Harris wrote. “It is a future that reverses the tragic waste of human potential that has become the hallmark of our prison system.”

Crews from several fire departments are battling a major grass fire late Saturday afternoon that has claimed at least 500 acres in a rural area in Solano County between Vacaville and Winters, and is prompting mandatory evacuations, firefighters said.